
r 0W^2 G^qX-z^, 
•L^mAoxL 


of s?ave*y fcy 
5 • Mcw-C&g 

W^s/'^//u>to/\, I&G4 
















































































































































































































Glass Z4SJ 
Book -.E-Mi 















/ 




































IMMEDIATE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

Y-y y{ 

f BY 

\ 

ACT OF CONGRESS. 


S IP 33 IE O H 


OP 


ion. B. GRATZ BROWI, of Missouri 

ji i 


DELIVERED IN THE U. S. SENATE, MARCH 8, 1864. 



WASHINGTON*, 

j, POLKINHORN, PRINTER, 875 AND 377 D STREET, NEAR JSE7»X , «Bf 

1 8 6 4. 








*4 




4 



ET-f 53 
■ 6St'S 




. * ■*' 


*. 



r 


E©a. His*« So«< 


4 




/ 












• < 





“REVOLUTIONS NEVER GO BACKWARD.” 




P IE IE C El 


0 


'Tlie following additional poet ions were offered by Mr. Brown by way of amendment 
to the bill ("Senate No. 41 ) to promote enlistments in the Army of the United States: 

“ Sec. 3. And be it farther enacted , That the proclamation of the President of January 
I, 1863, declaring all persons held as slaves in certain designated States and parts of 
States then in rebellion against the Government of the United States to be thereafter 
free, be, and the same is hereby, confirmed and made of full effeet as law ; and courts 
of justice are required to recognize the same, and all persons declared to be free by the 
said proclamation, or by this act or any subsequent act of Congress, shall be entitled 
to sue and be sued and give evidence in all courts of justice as other citizens. 

Sec. 4. And be it farther enacted , That from and after the passage of this act there 
shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the States or Territories 
of the United States otherwise than "in punishment for crime, whereof the party shall 
have been duly convicted, any law, usage, custom, or claim to the contrary notwith¬ 
standing ; but all persons shall be held to be born free.” 


Mr. BROWN said: 

Mr. President, that slavery yet livetli the discussion which has attended every 
measure introduced here trenching upon it sufficiently attests. Neither dead nor wil¬ 
ling to die, but struggling for being by joint and ligature and tissue and nerve, that 
some center of future growth may lurk under proviso or exception, its vitality ig 
upheld in this hour by appeal to the same constitutionalisms and local countenance 
that will be swift to maintain it hereafter if this epoch shall pass without its utter eas- 
‘Action. 

Under such conviction, and resolute to permit no fit occasion for terminating it* 
jstence to go unimproved, the sections just read have been offered—sections assur- 
x, freedom not only, as set forth in the original bill, to the mother or wife or child of 
ose colored soldiers who may venture life in defense of your homes, for as yet they 
ave no homes ; freedom not only to all those claimed as slaves and heretofore resident 
m the districts declared to be in rebellion and embraced in the proclamation of January, 

, 1863 ; but freedom to all those now held in bondage, without distinction of State or 
Territory, throughout the whole land, and as supreme law of this nation, enacted by 
virtue of that power which resides in the Congress of the United States to maintain 
the Government and preserve the liberties of the people. 

The question of authority in Congress to legislate on this subject carries with it the 
minor ones of extent, expediency, and necessity ; for its discretion is absolute, and not 
subject to revision. Those who recognize the right, therefore, to declare the absolute 
freedom of such as are claimed for service by disloyalfpersons, or the freedom of those 
taking up arms for the Government of the United* States, or the freedom of those es¬ 
caping within the lines of the Army, must concede the full power to pass an act of 
abolition as a war measure, or as a measure essential to the future security of the 
eountry against war. For it will not be found possible to establish any line of demark- 
ation, sustained by right, that shall apply to a part and not to the whole, that shall 
regard them in relation to one person as “ captives of war,” and treat them in relation 
to another as “chattels;” that shall justify manumission where our armies are not, 
and forbid it where they are or have been. All these human beings, confirmed thus 
in their inalienable rights of freedom, are not property which the Government is tak¬ 
ing for its own use, and to which it thereby acquires a title of ownership, but it is in- 
gtitutions and customs and claims and ancient wrongs grown intolerable, that we blot 












4 


out as not compatible with the “genera welfare” of this nation— never consistent with 
justice, and not now possible with any assurance of life itself. 

That the Constitution of the United States invests Congress and the Executive 
with all powers necessary to maintain that Government, provide for the common de¬ 
fense, and guaranty republican forms, has been too often asserted, acted upon, and 
concurred in by this Senate to make it now liable to question, and that the existence 
of such plenary power, even to the extirpation of slavery, if adjudged necessary for 
the safety of the State, was recognized by some of the ablest of contemporary exposi¬ 
tors of that Constitution, is well attested in our history. Especially was this the case 
in the debates of the Virginia convention of delegates, where perhaps that instrument 
passed its severest scrutiny. Patrick Henry, in enumerating his objections to its rati¬ 
fication, speaks thus: 

“ With respect to that part of the proposal which says that every power not granted 
remains with the people, it must be previous to adoption, or it will involve this coun¬ 
try in inevitable destruction. To talk of it as a thing subsequent, not as one of your 


unalienable rights, is leaving it to the casual opinion of the Congress who shall take 


up the consideration of the matter. They will not reason with you about the effect of 
this Constitution. They will not take the opinion of this committee concerning its 
operation. They will construe it as they please. If you place it subsequently, let me 
ask the or -equences. Among ten thousand implied powers which they may assume, 
they may, K we be engaged in war, liberate every one of your slaves if they please. 
And this must av i will be done by men a majority of whom have not a common in¬ 
terest with you. They will therefore have no feeling of your interests. It has been 
repeatedly said here that the great object of a national Government "was national de¬ 
fense. ffh.at power which is said to be intended for security and safety may be rendered 
detestible and oppressive. If they give power to the General Government to provide 
for the general defense , the means must be commensurate to the end. All the means 
in the possession of the people must be given to the Government which is intrusted 
with t 7 e public de f ense. In this State there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand 
black*, and there are many in several other States. But there are few or none in the 
Northern States ; ar d yet if the Northern States shall be of opinion that our slaves are 
numberless, they may ca 11 forth every national resource. May Congress not say That 
every black man must fight ? Did we not see a little of this last war ? We were not so 
hard pushed as to me he emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every 
slave who would go to the Army sliou’d be iiee. Another thing will contribute to 
bring this event about. Slavery is detested. We feel its fatal effects ; we deplore it 
with the pity of humanity. Let all these considerations at some future period p’-ess 


with In 1 ! force on the minds of Cong, ess. Let that inhanitv which I trust will distin¬ 


guish America, and t >e necessity of national defense—let a 1 ! these 


things operate on 


tlieiv minds, they wiU search that paper and see if they have power of manumission 


Noi have statesmen in late years hesitated to announce the same broad and emphatic 
interpretation. John Quincy Adams, in the discussions of the House of Representa¬ 
tives, made use of such declarations as these : 

“ Sir, in the authority given to Congress by the Constitution of the United States to 
declare toar , all the powers incidential to war are by necessary implication conferred 
upon the Government of the United S.tates.” * * “ There are two classes 

of powers vested by the Constitution of the United States in their Congress and Exe¬ 
cutive Government : the powers to be executed in time o: peace and the powers inci¬ 
dent to war. That the powers of peace are limited by provisions within the body of 
the Constitution itself; but that the powers of war are limited and regulated only by 
the laws and usages of nations, and are subject to no other limitation.” * * 

* * “ I (To not admit that there is even amorg t! e peace jioioers of Congress 

no such authority ; but in war there are many ways by which Congress not only have 
the authority, but are bound to inteifere with the institution of slavery in the States.” 

* * “When the Southern States are the battle-field between 


And have they not, sir l Have i jev not power lo provide for the general defence and 
welfare ? May they not think that these call for J he abolition <Jf slavery ? May the 
not pronounce all slaves free, and wiU they not be warranted by that power? This 
no ambiguous implication or deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have th\s 
power in clear , unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly erercise it. As much as 
deplore slaveiy, I see that prudence forbids its abolition. I deny that the General b 
Government ought to set them free, because a decided majority of the States have not! 
the ties of sympathy and fellow-feeh'ng for those whose interests would be affected by \ 
their emancipation. The majority of Congress is to the North, and the slaves are to T 
the South.”— ElioVs Debates , pages 589, 590. 


1 




t 


f\ 


l 







« 


5 

sla\ei\ raid emancipation, Congress may sustain tlie institution by war, or perhaps 
abolish it by treaties of peace ; but they will not only possess the constitutional power 
so to interfere, but they will be bound in duty to do it by tlie express provisions of 
the Constitution itself. From tlie instant the slaveholding States become the theatre 
of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that instant the war powers of Congress extend 
to interference with the institution of slavery in every way by which it can be inter¬ 
fered with. * * * ' * “ With a call to keep down slaves in an insur¬ 

rection and a civil war come?, full and plenary power to this House and the Senate over 
the whole subject. It is a witr power. Whether it be a war of invasion or a war of 
insurrection, Congress has power to carry on the war, and must carry it on according 
to the laws of war ; and by the laws of war an invaded coiintry has all its laws and 
municipal institutions swept by the board, and martial law takes the place of them. 
Thin power in Cong res* has, perhaps, never been called into exercise under the present 
Constitution of the United States.”— Speeches of J. Q. Adams, 1836-1842. 

It will thus appear that both the elder and later interpretations of the Constitution unite 
in recognizing this war power as existing in Congress and the Executive, and it only 
remains to set forth that under such exercise and by virtue of the received law which 
controls it, the subject-matter here claimed for its action is fully embraced therein. 
Many references to received authorities might be made on this point, for it is one very 
well attested; but a single quotation will suffice to exemplify the spirit of them all. 
Thus Yattel says : 

“It has been observed (§ 196J) that we may be obliged, if not externally, yet m con¬ 
science and by the laws of equity, to restore to a third party the booty we have recov¬ 
ered out of the hands of an enemy who hail taken it from him in an unjust war. The 
obligation is more certain and more extensive with regard to a people whom our enemy 
had unjustly oppressed. For people thus spoiled of their liberty never renounce the 
hope of recovering it. If they have not voluntarily incorporated themselves with the 
State by which they have been subdued, if they have not finely aided her in the war 
against us, we certainly ought so to use our victory as not merely to give them a new 
master, but to break their chains. To deliver an oppressed people is a noble fruit of 
victory ; it is a valuable advantage gained thus to acquire a faithful friend. The can¬ 
ton of Schweitz, having wrested the country of Glaris from the house of Austria, re¬ 
stored the inhabitants to their former liberties ; and Glaris, admitted to the Helvetia 
confederacy, formed the sixth canton.”— VatteVs Laws of Nations, book page 391, side 
page 392. 

Again, it will be observed that intrinsically the proposition to abolish slavery by 
constitutional amendment, and this to abolish it by act of Congress, do not differ as to 
the effect upon alleged right of property in slaves. No one proposes to make compen¬ 
sation in connection with constitutional amendment, so that the deprivation is the 
same in the one case as the other. It is only a question, then, which may be stated 
thus : can we get at the deprivation both ways ? Assuredly we can, because the power 
to deal with the question both ways resides with us—to deal summarily under the 
war powers so called, or by constitutional amendment. 

As an original question, the right of property in mail cannot be successfully main¬ 
tained, and they who contend for it here now in deference to alleged constitutional ob¬ 
ligations, will iind themselves constantly embarrassed and involved in contradictions 
of thought and reasoning until they shall utterly discard it. Rights of property do 
not originate in constitutions ; they are anterior to them. Right of property is but 
another name for the natural right of each one to enjoy the fruit of his own labor, and 
in its very inception repels and precludes the idea of slavery. It is simply idle, then, 
to claim such property in human beings and quote the Constitution as conferring the 
title, or to rely upon its guarantees, if any such could be truly inferred from its 
clauses, as an inviolable protection for such claim, when it so clearly confers the power 
to dispense with even still higher guarantees of personal liberty in maintaining the 
Government. 

The rigid argument in behalf of this power best states itself in the imperiled condition 
of the country. Every battle-field is an annotation full of meaning, every soldiers’s 
grave a link in the chain of evidence. Slavery, containing in itselt that antagonism 
to free institutions which predetermined its appeal to arms in hostility to the national 
thought and the national being, must perish to make assured any ending both of pre. 
sent conflict and future convulsion ; and slavery in a State semi-loyal or neutral, un¬ 
der this consideration, is just as fatal to our national existence as in a State in open 
rebellion. Tlie exceptional condition of professedly loyal claimants here and there 
cannot, in this grave conjuncture of affairs, be permitted to control our decision and 
operate to extend the tenure of slaveholding; for it is from the inherent iirmossib’ 1 ’*”’ 


/ 





« 


8 


i 




of assimilating that system with our free Republic in any state, owing to its violation 
of human rights, that the supreme reason for direct abolition originates. The outcome 
of a moral wrong, fostered and encouraged in the social state, is seen in the calamities 
of to-day. That such calamities may not attach to any other day ; that the Republic 
may be rid of a disease which has brought it nigh to death ; that the struggle may be 
forever ended with those who have taken up arms to make permanent the institution 
of slavery ; and that the American people may repose in undisturbed security, free, 
prosperous, and cohesive, are the cumulative necessities that impel us now to pass a 
direct act of universal freedom. 

But why should we hesitate ? It is an advance, not a reaction. It is the first step 
toward those great destinies which await us, if only we be true. Do we prefer to go 
back into the past with its dismays and corruptions and terrible retributions, or go 
forth into the future of hope and faith and achievement ? Let us rather contemplate 
the full measure of that vast change of which this is but a beginning, and realizing 
somewhat the spirit of the age upon which we are entering, look therein for other and 
convincing reasons to assure us that the demand for this action is not premature, but 
a well-considered-wisdom ; that it is not isolated and optional, but connected with still 
larger and impending issues. 

To do so, however, to note the march of these times, it will require that we disabuse 
our speech of much of the phraseology that gives false seeming to events around us. 
Thus the terms rebellion , used to designate this conflict, unionism, in varied inflections, 
chosen to generalize our future, and reconstruction, largely adopted to signify projected 
modes of arrangement, are all half phrases, taking their meaning from obsolete rather 
than existing attitudes, and afford no correct idea of this era or its ending. Rebellion 
may be well applied to denote mere resistence forcibly of a part of our people to the na¬ 
tional thought; but when employed to convey a comprehension of and give a name for 
this great progression and conflict, that reaches for its origin far back into anti-slavery 
agitation, and looks forth for its consummation far forward to the new time, it be¬ 
comes totally devoid of aptness or significance. The rebellion is but an incident in the 
protracted struggle, covers only the idea' of appeal to force, and measures not that 
moral flood-tide that surges on this great movement. As well characterize the events 
of France of ’89 by the resistence of La Vendee, or the birth and growth of the Eng¬ 
lish Commonwealth by the reduction of Ireland, as guage the meaning of this conflict 
by such a formula of language. And so of unionisms; those pliant, fearful, mock- 
modest attempts to cover up these giant, gaunt, naked facts, that are stalking about 
in the daylight, with the gum-elastic garments of old-time political drapery. The sim¬ 
ple unities of the former state unrelated to rights or wrongs, what do they signify now ? 
They are as passionless as algebraic equations, as vain as mythologies. Who cares for 
the Union of the past—a Union fraught with seeds of destruction—bitter with humil¬ 
iations and disappointments ? Who believes in the grief of these hired mourners, so 
lachrymose before the world ? They are not even self-deceived. It is likewise with re¬ 
construction—a free masonry that imagines it has only blocks and stones to deal 
with, or a child’s play, that would buildup as they have tumbled down its card-castles, 
putting affably the court cards on top again. Foolish craftsmen, seeing not that it is 
the life arteries and the thews f nd the sinews of a nation’s being that are dealt with, 
and that it must be regeneration or death. 

The supremest truth of our time is this : that it is a revolution in whose whirls wo 
are eddying and with whose currents we have to contend ; a revolution the grandest 
ever yet essayed by man, and destined to give its watchword to other lands and peo¬ 
ples ; a revolution in all its great outlines of enkindled faith, of continued development, 
of overturned tliralldoms, of liberated hope. The strata of this nation’s sediment and 
coldness and oppression has been broken through. Human nature once more, by the 
grace of God, has become volcanic and eruptive, and the precious truths of freedom 
and fraternity are welling up from their deep foundations away below the defacements 
of men. It is a revolution full of promise. What if its inceptions were of the feeblest, 
What if the small threads of its gathering can only be traced or identified by that most 
miscroscopic of all glasses, personal vanity ? The origin was. The movement came 
from us and of us, asserting itself in divers ways, but chief of all in the overthrow of 
slavery ethics, increasing in volume as people became aroused to the peril of national 
courses, possessing itself first of prisous and then of pulpits and then of platforms, be¬ 
coming at length the embodied national will—an assured revolution. And in the great 
transition from the old to the new, let all friends of freedom realize the entire truth 
and accept a full responsibility by acknowledging now, as we shall be proud to ac¬ 
knowledge hereafter, that in this flowing on we are the movement, in this going for¬ 
ward we are the progression, in all this change and alteration and accomplishment 
tv - «pvo)nti'> r ' 



7 






Tlie receiving such a comprehension of our present convulsions is important far be¬ 
yond the niceties of language, going as it does straight-way to consult the elements that 
are at work, preparing us in advance for a celerity of events and a larger scope of transi¬ 
tion not possible under other social condition. And whither does it all tend, this rush 
ot action, this displacement of ideas, these swift affiliations ? It would be only tlie part 
of presumption—a foolish presumption in the highest wisdom—to claim a foreknowl¬ 
edge of such in its entirety and orbed completion; but yet the humblest of those who 
-vsith earnest endeavor shall seek to know what manifestations there are of things to 
come will not labor altogether in vain. There are striking indications that point out, 
if they do not determine, the ending. There are vaguely outlined groupings that 
shape themselves into more definite forms as they are scrutinized. Especially are there 
three great central ideas, raying forth into the darkness of the future their broad beams 
of light, and illuminating the paths that are to be trodden by this people in their 
“marching on 7 ’—three impending necessities as it were, distinct yet related, which 
may be set forth as, first, a realization and establishment in truth and not merely in 
name of absolute freedom policies throughout the whole land; second, the building up 
from its sure foundations of a nationality that shall represent the aspirations of tlie 
whole people lor a democratic unity ; and, third, the conforming of our Government, in 
its administration as in its recognitions, to those divine truths that' go to constitute 
and inspire a devout Christian State holding itself “as ever in the great Taskmaster’s 
eye.” 

I. Let us consider the first of these necessities. What are the requirements at our 
hands that we may be true to that behest ? If the end in view be conceded, is there 
any latitude ot choice as to the means, any room for experiments touching liberties ? 

Without doubt the abolition of slavery throughout all the States of this Union by 
general statute such as now proposed must be the initial measure to a:*y freedom poli¬ 
cies reposing on national authority as their guarantee ; for until the slave code shall 
be thus canceled in fact no constitutional amendment covering that ground will ever 
be had. It must be confessed, moreover, that even such enactment will not complete 
the establishment of popular liberties over all the territory where it is received as law. 
It will end and determine the form, the name, and pledge the national power to main¬ 
tain the act, but somewhat more and after that becomes imperative to do away with, 
the substance. Has it not been a favorite taunt of the oligarchs that there was white 
slavery as well as black slavery ? And there was truth in the assertion. Indeed, 
acute minds have not been wanting to convert the fact into an argument, and defend the 
enslavement of the African by direct force because of the alleged enslavement through so¬ 
cial distortions of the Scandinavian or the Saxon or the Celt. While such reasoning is 
false and sinister, yet it will net be controverted that many of the worst features ot 
slavery may exist where the badge itself does not obtain. Will any one affirm that 
Connecticut, which exhibits such intolerance for the foreign born, or that Illinois, 
which is disgraced with a black code revolting to all sense of justice, can claim to be 
regarded as free States ? With equal truth may it be said also that much of the white 
population of Europe in densely crowded districts, where an inexorable ledger, with its 
profit and loss account, rules the Hour, come under conditions that render them in¬ 
trinsically enslaved, while, to a still greater extent, the nominally free white popula¬ 
tion of the largely slave-breeding and slave-holding sections of our country have all 
along been reduced to a dependence for which even the name of liberty could not atone. 
An enlarged policy of freedom, such as that now asserting itself throughout this land, 
will not fail to take note of such phantasms, such simulations, such diseased condition, 
and while striking at slavery in name and estate, will see to it that it will be the reality, 
and not the image that goes down. Especially, therefore, does it devolve on those who 
control to take heed, having proclaimed a free society as tlie type of the future, so to 
order regeneration, and so to foster new growths, and so to adjust the relations of con¬ 
quered States, internal as well as external, that slavery shall no longer be a synonym 
of labor, and labor no longer the equivalent of slavery. It would be folly, abjectest 
recreancy, an utter perversion of the holy uses of the blood and treasure of the nation 
so lavishly poured out, to act otherwise, to do aught less than this. , 

And here let it be reflected that they who are so swift to put baek the old forms in 
the old places simply to bring about the old relations to the national Government, 
either have no conception of the conditions and environment with which slavery main¬ 
tains itself, or else they are false to the principle and tlie faith to compass selfish ends. 
Unless this freedom work be well done it will not be done at all, for slavery will return 
to power along with its masters. It will have no difficulty to find names under which 
to mask itself, oj politicians to pay court to it, or money-lenders to buy it an amnesty. 


Take the illustration afforded of this fact in Missouri, and see how tragic has been the 


i 






/ 











8 




anti-slavery struggle there, even with a large majority of the people pledged to free¬ 
dom. The State stands to-day resold into slavery for another year to accomplish a 
political negotiation. The misrule of the past, the sway of unsympathizing generals, 
the upholding of pro-slavery State organization, the persecution of the loyal element, 
and the arming of the disloyal element, find a natural outgrowth in a miserable bar¬ 
gain to postpone a constitutional convention, concoct an alliance between official power 
and re-actionary sentiment, and enunciate a bogus presidential preference. 

What, then, is the problem with which dealings must be had in this essential work 
of making solid the national policies in the sections occupied, and to be occupied, by 
'our arms ? The organisms of peace must flow oitt of the rights of war, and in so far 
forth the national authority is disembarrassed in its operations by restraints that might 
intervene in ordinary times. 

Four million whites and three million blacks will represent with sufficient accuracy 
■the entire population, a population intermixed and dwelling together heretofore under 
laws declaring the blacks a servile laboring class, and conditions that render two-thirds 
of the whites a dependent, helpless class: the land all held by a few thousand owners, 
who claimed to be a ruling class socially, morally, and politically. War, as has been 
said, has loosened all the joints of that structure. Rights of property forfeited, estates 
abandoned by rebel whites and held by loyal blacks, distinction of classes broken down 
Sri the destruction of all society, laws of vassalage suspended by the proclamations of 
freedom and the conscription of armies, it remains only to impose, under protection 
of the military arm, a new civilization that shall accord with the life of our Republic, 
and that shall carry along with it guarantees against any revival of the old state whose 
concluding was so much of disaster. Codes to secure the liberties of all under the law 
are therefore antecedent necessities, codes that must bo ratified and come up from be¬ 
low as well as codes that must bo enacted and come down from above—the double af¬ 
firmance of the new attitude of freedom by local and Federal authority, a joint initia¬ 
tive of support and protection. It has been the boast of some that the courts can 
make laws by interpretation. Hence, nothing that can contribute to foreclose any 
latitude of construction in this behalf should be omitted. A triple wall of accomplished 
facts, of statutes that reflect things done, of codes that embody completions, of consti- * 
tutions reconstituted, must be built up around an immured judiciary. In any re-entry 
on political life it must be paramount and primary that such organic recognition of 
freedom as tho higher law shall precede all other exercise of civil functions ; must pre¬ 
cede it as the only sufficient assurance that the law of the locality is in accord with 
the law of the nation. Hence tho duty imposed hero and now, both to declare such as 
the universal public law of this land and to require that it bo declared likewise in ad¬ 
vance as the constitutional basis of any of those societies heretofore or now in revolt. 
There must be an asylum for questioned liberty opened in every tribunal and under 
every commission, whether Federal or State, that shall sit in judgment or wield power, 

The preliminary step, moreover, in any political reassertion of the State, and any 
reorganization of its social forms, must be in the nature of a primary convention; oth¬ 
erwise the hope or fear of reaction always intervenes to demoralize provisional govern¬ 
ment. The question of freedom is in reality, however denied in proclamation, re¬ 
mitted from its attitude of being an achieved military result, to become the sport of 
parties and factions and intrigues—worn as a cloak by the side most ambitious of office 
while leaning to slavery—-openly and earnestly demanded by unselfish advocates, who 
care not for the spoils of the conflict. In this unequal strife freedom suffers, and the 
•mockery of freedom too often triumphs. The lukewarm, the insincere, tho hostile be¬ 
come tho guardians of the incipient regeneration, and if they do not blast all its hope, 
it will only be because, born of timidity, they prefer to compromise with inaction 
•rather than risk a conflict. Any policy of administration, therefore, which shall conduce 
to this latter result will be in substance a reaction, and hostile to the maintainanee of 
freedom policies in the slave States. It matters not under what title or what auspices 
it may be inaugurated, its results will bo speedily seen in official and political mani¬ 
pulation, in an enginery set at work to accomplish selfish ends rather than the true 
object of emancipation from the usages as well as laws of slavery. Take, however, the 
initiative of freedom as a result predetermined, organize a constitutional convention to 
conform organic law to that attitude, exclude parties from constructing themselves on 
any doubts of that consummation, and there will he little inducement subsequently to 
its questioning if upheld by wise national dealings in its furtherance and support. 

Thus, of all this inorganic mass of population to he reorganized, nearly half will 
stand pledged to loyalty by virtue of emancipation. Of the residue, those loyal at the 
cutset, and others gradually lapsing into loyalty as they recognize the interests of 
labor to be coincident with the establishment of freedom, multitudes of the former non- 




> 














9 


•slweholding people will become; reliable elements of a now growth and a new socialism 
under such political readjustment as has j ust been recited. In this adaptation, however, 
four million laborers must be guarantied not merely the abstract title and name of 
freedmen, bat its substance in the shape of military organization and the right of 
homesteads upon abandoned estates. Confiscation must do its work toward reorgani¬ 
zation. The land all held in mortmain, as it were, entailed upon slavery, what but 
slavery can ensue ? The conditions of such ownership foreordain such servitudes, as is 
evidenced by the peonage of Mexico or the vassalage just abolished in Russia. De¬ 
prived of homes, yet granted liberties, what can you hope but three million freedmen 
will tall under disorderly conditions if you open no avenue to permanent and prosper¬ 
ous settlement? The policy of small freeholds must be initiated to enable freedom to 
maintain itself. Slavery in its artificial development at the South monopolized the 
land, and thus left no stand-point from which to challenge its existence. You must 
undo its work. This is necessary, because it is upon the subdivision of lj-nds, the 
small freeholds, the multiplied homesteads, that the support of religion and education, 
the church and the school-house, must hereafter rest. It is idle, nay, it is criminal to 
halt in taking this step under the plea that it may work destitution to the few. You 
have already millions of the destitute to provide for, and this is your only present re¬ 
source. Is not the landed property of the rebels already confiscate by refusal to pay 
any tax to the support of this war ? Shall the plantations of the slave masters alone 
have immunity and exemption when the home of every loyal workman is laid under 
'contribution? Destitution is a hard word, but when slavery went to war it pit its 
■•estates at the venture; and the abolition of slavery carries with it the overthrow of 
that monopoly on which it reposed and grew strong. How long would it take the slave 
power to resume its sway in Louisiana if to-day reinstated in the control of abandoned 
plantations where the freedmen are yet held in bondage under a military provost mar¬ 
shal system ; whore they are penned up and excluded from the light of knowledge, or 
association, or converse ; where it is difficult to detect any change of condition, only a 
change of owners ? Does the master’s dole, in the shape of wages, with none of the 
perquisities of free action or free migration, constitute a policy on which you dare to 
repose the future of freedom at the South ? All this is but a counterfeit freedom, re¬ 
action in disguise, in that worst of all disguises, a military disguise. It is reaction so 
organized as to require but amnesty to make it slavery. 

Codes and confiscations and commerce are marching in the rear of our armies de¬ 
manding to be set up in authority to restore what has been destroyed, and make new 
bases for other advances. The eagerness with which trade rushes forward to supply 
wants, renew distributions, gather in agencies, and make sale of estates, crops, luxuries, 
titles, franchises, claims, goes to show how much it is needed as precursor not as 
afterthought of reorganization. Trade, the great leveler and builder, the colonizer of 
empires and the pioneer of civilization, needs encouragements there, and not restric¬ 
tion. The cordon of non-intercourse should be along your military front. Behind your 
Army lines it should be as free as the winds, to carry forward rapidly the elements of 
new population or enterprise and to knit together by other interests and ties the torn 
relations of labor to capital. The blockades of the ocean have no place on the land, 
for the sea has no tenements, but conquered territory you wish to make your own. Is 
it not true that in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas the only points that give sign 
of a saving vitality are those where, in defiance of paper edicts, commerce has forced 
an establishment ? What, then, may not be hoped from entire abrogation of all such 
embargo? To-day the free men who have sought your permits would have repeopled 
up to the lines of occupation if invited and protected and fostered and domiciled. 
Traffic would have given hand to production; redistribution would have confirmed in¬ 
dustry; labor would have prevented scarcity; the needs of self-defense would have 
supplied military organization; and thus incipient communities sprung out of freedom 
and loyalty would have been preparing to renew the State. The policy of setting up 
a Chinese wall of exclusion under the name of regulation, that shall parcel out to 
speculation the dealings and growths and regenerations of recovered territory, is one 
calculated to postpone rather than hasten the end, to reserve the lands for reoccupation 
of the men of the rebellion, and the avocations and employments of interchange for 
the control of a revived hostile sentiment. Such precarious chances make the most 
desperate and avaricious the forerunners of your social adjustment, rather than those 
moved by legitimate and patriotic impulses. This is an unwise and fatal system. In 
fact, in the very light of its failure you read the way to success. 

The regeneration of the slaveholding sections demanded by this revolution, which 
bears onward a free people to a free future, as has been remarked, must be thorough 
and substantia], not a makeshift, a cheatery, or a sham. Nothing other or less will 






1 


10 


answer the demand. Rebuilding of the political structure, too, must proceed, under 
the guardianship of congenial national, authority through authentic law and its safe¬ 
guards, and not pell-mell under the auspices of amnesty proclamations. The invita¬ 
tion back in such hurried wise of the slave masters to their old estate in the body-pol¬ 
itic if they will only swear fealty to the future decisions of a Supreme Court, is to give 
them present control of whatsoever loyal population may have shown itself, upon con¬ 
tingencies of an oath they have been s wift to violate heretofore. Restored to favor they 
will next ask to be armed ; and once armed they will, by militia systems, seek to dis¬ 
arm those.who have opposed them, and hostilities will become chronic and exasperat¬ 
ing. Is T o better illustration of the results of such conservative policy ean be cited than 
that afforded in my own State. More than a year ago an officer was detailed there to 
look up the evidences of subsequent disloyalty on the part of those who had availed 
themselves of amnesty under the cheap process of bond and oath. In a brief time he 
gathered more than three million dollars of forfeited bonds, and asked permission to 
proceed«upon them. It is scarcely necessary to add that the authority was refused, the 
officer remanded to his regiment in the field, and a new amnesty invites back the same 
rebel oath-takers to resume their political rights and assist to rule over us. 

Rest assured it is not such sinister courses, such shirking of responsibility, su«h 
balancing between loyalty and disloyalty, that can be tolerated, either in theory'or in 
practice, in speech or in administration, if we seek success in this war, and success 
commensurate with its cost. The policies of freedom are blended inseparably with the 
policies of war, and irresolution or untruthfulness in the one are sure to cause defeats 
and reverses in the other. Thus if the Goverment, false to its mission, simply enters 
upon the mastery and control of the slave population in the stead of their original 
claimants ; if, ignoring true, substantial liberty in the freedmen, it shall bind them 
over under a Coolie provost marshalship, as rigid in its control as the slave code ; if, re¬ 
fusing to confiscate abandoned plantations, it shall merely retain them or re-let them 
under a transient lease, while the labor of whole sections is without homesteads to at¬ 
tach it to new modes of life and industry; if it shall persist in excluding by trade 
regulations the loyal migrations of the free States eager to enter upon settlement or traf¬ 
fic or production or creating wealth in its varied shapes ; if it shall persist in inviting 
back to resume arms and franchises and ownerships and social control those in sympathy 
with the rebellion, with no better securities against reactions and subjugations of loyalty, 
and re-enslavement under new names, than it had against rebellion in the first instance— 
what but military failure can ensue? Armies thrown back have no supports, long 
lines of communications are exposed to danger with none to give notice of its approach, 
and each campaign has in addition to the exigencies of active service to people with its 
armies all the conquests gone before. Another result of such policies is that it will 
rapidly place in antagonism to all such administration those of the population whose 
loyalty is most signalized by their devotion to freedom. They will detect the counter¬ 
feit promptly, and see their own doom written in its succsss. They will understand 
that such a reconstruction, such a placing of the court cards on top again, may be very 
conservative to all seeming, very generous to rebels, but is death to loyal citizens. 
They will know that such freedom means slavery under new conditions and names, 
and that when Federal authority is withdrawn no consideration will be extended to 
them. The result will bevto bring the administration of the Government into more or 
less affiliation with the enemies of freedom and progress, and to prepare the way for 
compromise with reunion. But the thought of this people—that thought which is 
enshrined in their progress—will bear with no such outcome. The future of this Republic 
will never be permitted to repose on the oaths of those who have already violated the 
most sacred compacts. On the contrary, the ending must be a conquest, not a compro¬ 
mise. The policies of freedom must be ingrained into the new life of the heretofore 
enslaved sections by methods as deliberate as they are to be irresistible ; with a warm 
sympathy, an unrelaxed vigor, and a decision that knows no faltering. 

II. The second marked characteristic in the great progress which is swelling forward, 
over-turning old modes of thought, conscripting constitutions, and remodeling the 
functions of government, is an enkindled nationality. Out of the very burning and 
fire-froth of sectionalism springs the ideal of a true nation. The supreme democracy, 
which has been smothered under names and parties and cunning issues, has in these 
disturbed times recognized itself, and demands as its exponent a political form ooex- 
tensive with the country and imperial as itself. It does not need to tread back into 
the old exploded days to tell how unalterably the slave system that stained our name 
and wrecked our Federal unity has ever held in dread the undefiled democratic princi¬ 
ple ; how it has sought under a like nomenclature to palm off something other in its 
stead ; how it has labored to divert it into other channels of foreign conquest rather 

7 N O I 




,) 


V 


11 


than home assertion ; how it lias manacled it with chains of local organization and de¬ 
moralized it with the spoils of office. The recorded debates of this Senate will show 
far back how sncli fear ever haunted those leaders who have now taken a last appeal 
from democracy to war. At the point where rebellion began they recognized perfectly 
that it they were to preserve intact the slave system from being obliterated by the pro- 
* gress of a plebeian public will, it must be done by resort to violence and terror. They 
chose that resort deliberately, not foolishly, and stood to it with conviction and cour¬ 
age. It was the irrepressible conflict. And the antagonism is manifest now in the 
throes ot an unparelled struggle still more than in the plastic days of peace ; for with 
them development has shaped their slavery into confederate despotism, while here 
revolution uprises into nationality. The latent sympathy of this American people, 
the feeling ot brotherhood, the need of unity, at length demands and will have clear, 
emphatic type as a nation. IIow else can we construe this sq rapid resumption of 
sovereign right in all departments of the Government ? Drawing a sustenance no 
longer trom the customs but from the firesides, substituting national paper-credits for 
all other currencies, levying armies direct by conscriptions, not remotely by contin¬ 
gents, organizing vast industries, mortgaging the next age to its debt, and enforcing 
its laws as highest law even in matters of personal liberty—these are but as outer 
garments of an inner form already instinct with life. Nor is this a completion. So ‘ 
much has been realized, while in the future still more impends. The industrial 
relations of reconquered territories, inauguration of majestic commercial ways, settle¬ 
ments affecting multitudes of people, and vast undeveloped wealth, are in its hands. 
Again, consider the changed relation of heretofore self-styled sovereign States. Much 
has been said during the shadowing forth of this new phase of our political life of the 
“suicide of States,” and in groping down into the rubbish of the time it has been 
deemed needful to affix names and hypotheses to ascertained results. But what needs ? 
That no authority has been asked or resistance heeded from any State in enforcing 
national policies is literally true, and that such enforcement is inconsistent with any 
recognized vitality in State organization other than a strictly subordinate one, none 
will controvert. Call it, then, suicide or subordination, the implication is the same. 
Indeed, it is realized on every side that what was heretofore held up as “ State,” with 
assumption of a coequal or antagonistic control as such, is gone down in the mighty 
tread of this people marching on to deliverance. Commonwealths may exist, may be 
revived, may do functional work, may eo-operate in subordinate orbits, but their so- 
called sovereignty assuredly is suicided. State sovereignty, the leash sought to be put on 
the democracy of the nation; State sovereignty, the banner of the oligarchs in the war on 
freedom ; State sovereignty, the archetype of disunion and disintegration, has become 
a myth and a fable, and in fhe stead of its many idols there shines forth the one splen¬ 
dor and power of a national sovereignty foreordained to conquest. Such is the out¬ 
growth. Substantially it is the expression in advance of that which is to follow in 
due time by its appointed courses—the Continental Republic. It is the highest type of 
nationality, bounded by no fixed frontier of impassable prejudice, but representative 
of whoever may assimilate under its standard ; for while European rulers are seeking 
to bolster themselves with nativeisms, and to render synonymous nationalities and 
races, it is ours to assert the larger and truer nationality of fre^ principles and free 
men. Nor does this connect simply with geographical progress or endanger compaet- 
ness of guidance and control; for as its birth is from the people, so will it reflect 
their positioning. Democracy is its parent—democracy that asserts and recognizes 
itself again in the lusty turmoil of our great commotions—and democracy means 
numbers, and numbers*govern from the centre outward, and not jug-handle-wise from 
any remote source. Thus we see, and the fact is significant, in the vast impulses 
given to freedom policies, war policies, and national policies in the great Basin ot the 
Mississippi, with its fifteen millions of population, new illustration of the democratic 
force and faith of the people. Go forward furthermore, make dense that population, 
intensify the life of the recovered States, enumerate fifty millions rather than fifteen 
millions, and consider of the result. Power there, government there, democratic or¬ 
ganism there, reposing on rural and industrial masses, will abjure the monarchies of 
special interests that have sat around the edges clutching at control, and coerce the 
Republic into healthy action throughout. 

Originating thus, this new development of a national unity will require no after¬ 
molding to make it representative in its promptings. It will be a form of organized 
popular thought that will dictate to Cabinets and Administrations other policies than 
those of this hour ; that will look outward as well as inward, and if it accept its mission 
of a Continental Republic will be prompt to recognize the antagonisms erecting beyond 
and around us, no less than the incongruities abolishing within our present coniines.. 




o 



l 



12 


Be sure it will prove no respecter of a diplomatic connection that looks ever backward 
and never forward; that multiplies its embassadors and its plenipotentiaries, tailed out 
a hundred-fold by suites and attaches, and numberless commercial agents, to connect 
a shipping interest with twenty million artisans of Europe ; but apologizes through a 
couple of ministers and half a dozen consuls for its failure to unite our vast produc¬ 
tion and manufacture with the three hundred million machineless consumers around 
the Pacific circle. Be sure likewise -it will not fail to note and resent the intrusion of 
transatlantic monarchies to crush out a republic in Mexico, seize on the islands of the 
Gull’, and fortify a thousand miles of sea-coast threatning the line of our intcroceanic 
communication. France, Spain, England, a triple alliance, eager and watchful for the 
death of discordant belligerent States, will have to confront for their conquests a nation 
rising as a phoenix, writing Freedom on its flag, and fraternizing with liberty in all 
lands. 4 

And with equal if not still greater scrutiny will the new-born aspiration for national 
life look within to shape the expression and the correlations on which its future must 
repose. The fact that we have never been a nation heretofore, that in three quarters 
of a centiiry Ave have achieved no individuality, that our civilization has been insigni¬ 
ficant and transient and barren, only sharpens the zest for a future of enduring accom¬ 
plishment. That such a future cannot be predicated on distinctions of race, on subordi¬ 
nation of classes, on the accidents of lineage or tongue or c,lime, neither upon enslave¬ 
ment in any name of wealth or caste or condition—all this is certain, for it has been 
tried and failed ; has once been inoculated into the system to cure our social disease, 
but instead of healing has run into this putrid eruption that threatens with anarchic 
death. That new life must be founded on assimilations, not antagonisms, on an in- 
grown unity, not irreconcilable contradiction.' The lowly must be exalted, the de¬ 
pressed raised up, the ignorant educated, the slave freed, the chattel humanized, and 
a democratic equality before the law obtain for all man. The people must have fra¬ 
ternity as well as solidarity ; each must be a multiple of the whole. Just now amalga¬ 
mation is the ghost in grave-clothes that walks to terrify and affright, as if the very 
nation were not already an amalgam of all peoples, as if for generations ‘heretofore 
there had not been this same dwelling together side by side that is to be hereafter. 
Slavery feared not amalgation; shall Freedom then bo a greater coward ? Neither 
skins, nor colors, nor castes can determine here. The body-politic that shall sustain 
such nationality as ours is foreordained to bo must furthermore absorb all increments 
as they come, and not require an anaconda torpor of five or seven or tAventy years to 
determine the natural rights of man, his right to be one in any aggregate of many. All 
-such limitation on citizenship Avill pass away under attrition of growth. The open door 
of the Republic will invite the oppressed of every land to seek asylum and enter upon 
the enjoyment of liberty. Impartial justice will stand ready to succor and to aid all 
who shall appeal from Avrong or violence or intimidation. And that grand future of 
democratic unity will arrive when our people of all lineage and every type shall meet 
on the plane of equal rights to attest a nationality that will stand out a waymark to 
the centuries. 

IIT. The third ami, completing symbol of the outcome of these times will be found to 
indicate the instauration here of Christian Government, founded upon, in dwelling with, 
and springing out of the divine, justices—Government recognizing that in the affairs of 
nations, as in those of individuals, there is one equality that comes of the equality of 
creation, there is one right, avenger on compromises, which is the supreme right, there 
is one law, which must ever be, as it has ever been, a highe^ laAv. And they are to 
become practice, not merely theory. These are earnest days in the life-experiences of 
our people, and in this Senate, as abroad throughout the land, the most important fact 
around and about you is not ahvays your law of yesterday, or your tax of to-morrow, 
or your conscription of a month lienee ; it is not the vote here or the battle yonder ; 
but it is the spirit of this nation that upholds these things, and out of which they 
flow—the spirit that buoys you, Senators, into this upper air, and without which or false 
to which you Avill sink as empty, collapsed bladders. It is in obedience to such recogni¬ 
tion that now you hasten to do that which but lately you refused to do, nay, declared by 
resolution just repealed that you never would do. These are earnest days, let me repeat 
it, out of Avliich are coming convictions that will not bear to be trifled Avith ; and as it 
has become an accepted faith, the idea of nationality, that our being and the being of 
the nation are one and inseparable for good and for evil, so it will further appear that the 
existence on Avhicli Ave are entering as a great people is no half life, made up only of 
the vicissitudes of protection and the exaction of revenues, but must be blended in 
with those deeper feelings and outlooks and coworkings that ennoble and make sublime 
communities of men and entwine enduring hopes with cheering Auties. 



9 


\ 




13 


Nor i» this simply affirmation, unsupported by substantial experiences of history. 
On the contrary, it is the very epitome of what is memorable and held in veneration 
out of all annals. Never yet at any time have the aspirations of a whole people after en¬ 
larged liberties been dissociate from the yearning for a more clear affinity between 
God and Government. And can any fail to see the clear evidence of the same gloam¬ 
ings along our horizon? The voices now that are touched with truest, eloquence are 
they that have come up out of tribulation for conscience sake in the past. From the 
pulpit, as in all periods of unrest, proceed the foremost words of guidance—from the 
pulpit thf c preaches politics, as some have it; that preaches rather our God-wrouglit 
relations to fellow-men equally with those to a futuie state, as others more clearly in¬ 
terpret. Tnose grand old mother words of justice and truth and brotherhood begin to 
have meaning anew, kindled up in them by the light that is breaking out around. 
.The nation is putting on its Puritanism. Thanksgivings appoim themselves unitedly. 
Days of supplication are become somewhat more than holidays. The bowing down 
has ceased 1 o be a mockery in the presence of the mu. 1 FTndinous remembered dead; 
and even they who heretofore have been accounted most indifferent begin to hold to a 
realzing conviction that God does direct the affairs of nations by His special providences. 
The scoffers have had their generation, and we are returned upon a period of faith. 
These things aie plain before us. to be seen o" a 1 ’. Have they, then, no significance ? 
Do they point o no new time ? Are they to be swallowed up in reactions as godless as 
the past in our Government ? WH the endurances through wnich we have passed leave 
no moral impress ? is there to be im higher record of the deliv erances from great dangers „ 
than that of the statute-book? Can it be possilfie that t e deep moving of the spirit 
of this people which has accomplised so much of work ard worship shall L.ke no per¬ 
manent form that may transmit it to posterity? No! „ cannot be thus ; it never has 
been thus. It will not be in vain that we have learned o men v le sons of humility as 
well as experienced so many signal mercies. The scarle ’us of the past stand revealed 
and abashed. Is it presumptuous Pharisaical vanity O'. j.ce—how has it been cast 
down in the necessity of resort to the armed Intervention o p another and much dis¬ 
credited race to assist in final suppression of the rebellion ! ts-it pride of civilization— 
how lias it been atfrfult in the presence of so great perils and the appeal for solution to 
the b&rbai sms of force, the coarsest methods of untutored nature! Is it reliance up¬ 
on complex machinery of Government, the balances of political science, the tiick of 
names and forms—how brief has.been the delusion, and how complete the undeceiving, 
showing that all votings and ballotings and adjustings oi powers and solemn constitution¬ 
making will never neutralize a received falsehood or equalize the scale of right and 
wrong ! Turn where you will, the lesson fis the same, that it is not in departure; 
from but in conformity to divine precept that a nation will find its prosperity; that 
there is «° law of retribution for the sin of a peop^ as of a person, and that it r> only by 
cleaving to the right at every sacrifice that any hope oi a broad, enduring unity can 
be justified. 

Jt was a declaration that led up to much thought and was significant of much which 
has since transpired, that this nation could not endure half free and half slave, that 
one or the other would be supreme. Hut if is a t nth of far deeper s'gnificence that 
this nation will not long survive as such wiih no Cod anvwhere in its Constitution, 
with policies shamelessly substituted for duties, and with a Government the antithesis 
rather than C e exponent of any aspiration of the people fiov higher development as a 
free Christian fotate. The end of such conjunctions i ‘ust be desolating anarchy, and 
will he fatal to all respect for authority. What other is the meaning of that strange 
and stupendous demoralization which lias characterized the administration of pubho 
afiairs in these UnitedJStates as the result of three quarters of a century of growth? 
Without doubt ouis ias been for many years the worst governed community on the 
face of Fie glob'', in all aspects o officio’ conduct. Fraud and peculation and neglect 
and waste and indulgence and nepotism and intrigue and time-serving, and all the cal¬ 
endar of crimes, do our governing. Towns and cities and States, with multiplied char¬ 
ters and checks, have all taken the same charac^e g la^eii to a large extent under sin¬ 
ister control, become asylums of corruption, are a j~ev and a byword of reproach. 
Names of policemen, aldernen, Congressmen, hear a stain. When quit of his voca¬ 
tion the curious ask. “Is he honest?” Politics have become a filthy pool, in whose 
waters the good and brave shrink to be immersed. And this in its entirety is the re¬ 
sult of a practical atheism in government. The ignoring of any moral responsibility in 
the State entails the absence of any practical morality in its administration. What 
other could be tlie outcome of such national apostasy than the national demoralization 
upon which we have fallen? And uom whence are we o expect any reform? He sure 
it wiU not be from continuance'in such courses. Half a century more of like degene^ 


O 


u 


ration and what of good is left in the land will revolt from such dominion, preferring 
death to abject disgrace. Human nature cannot stand it. This, then, is the moment¬ 
ous question of our people in the present hour, and how best to return to other ideas 
of government, and other bases of public administration, challenges all‘their fore¬ 
thought and endeavor, all their humility and entreaty. And it is because the evil lie* 
deeper than men or offices that it demands such inquest. It is not only that pure men 
shall be put in office, or that there be pure offices to put them in; but the controlling 
thought over men and offices must be of that purity which recognizes a tribunal before 
which no deceit prospereth. Indeed there is no refuge for any nation out of such a 
low estate but in Despotism to constrain probity, or Christianity to inspire purity; and 
for democracy, such as ours,'where the rule is with the many, tlie latter is the only 
safety. And how true is this, as in all things else, is the instinct of peoples ; how 
clearly does the great heart of the multitudes in this day of revolution recognize such 
dependence, and how sternly is it putting on the armor of Faith for the conflict with 
corruption, and bowing down before God to search out conformity to His eternal laws ! 
The many are not blinded; but clearly see irrepressible «onllict between a nation to bo 
saved and a Government to be damned. Not that the obsolete type of Church and 
State will be revived in our Republic, not that formalisms of creed and ritual shall be 
enacted or set up in the stead of departed convictions, but something more and other 
than all this, in the repudiation of those falsities that are the parlance of cabinets and 
the resorts :>f administration, in the absolute reception and enforcement of that impar¬ 
tial justice and brotherhood which makes the true social state, and in the elevation to 
control and authority in the nation of the same moralities and Christianized public 
thought, which is ever the highest and last appeal among the consciences of men. 

Mr. President, it has been endeavored by the foregoing analysis to set forth the 
three distinctive features which characterize the movement and the time wherein we 
are called to act or to suffer. If the views which have been advanced be true, if the 
requirements of faith, and freedom, and nationality be not exaggerated, then it is 
equally true that no time should be lost in consummating legislation here that shall 
directly conform to the end at which we must arrive if we are not to perish utterly. 
We may not rightfully put off for accomplishment three years hence that which beckon* 
as the duty of the hour. Direct dealing with the wrongs of this land must be had by 
the nation’s Congress, regardless of the traditions of local jurisdiction and with abso¬ 
lute shaking off of the foul heathenism of property in man. Under the system of 
biennial Legislatures, amid the chances of political opposition, in face of disorganized 
States, a period equal to that during which the war has already existed would have to 
transpire before you could perfect freedom by any constitutional amendment. The as¬ 
sent of three fourths of the States cannot be sooner had. But the emergency is press¬ 
ing ; the benefit of sucli invigoration is needed now. Nor is there any other reliance. 
Smators declare here daily in conference an unwillingness to trust this question to the 
; 'Cpulations-of a discordant Cabinet or an indecisive Executive—an Administration 
<ged into freedom policies and never there through out-spoken conviction. Why 
hesitate then to act ? You cannot doubt the future. It is unwarranted moreover to 
assume that such an enactment will be frustrated by hostile decisions hereafter. The 
Supreme Court will do in the future, rest assured, as it has done in the past—will con¬ 
form to accomplished facts and a clearly delivered public will that shall make imme¬ 
diate ending of slave systems. It is only halting policies here that can justify it in 
further equivocation, or tempt it to brave annihilation by decreeing that scarce con¬ 
ceivable outrage of the re-enslavement of four million human beings. 

But if there is one conclusion more worthy than another to be deduced from a re¬ 
view of the forces that surround us and the needs that impend over us, it isvtliat this 
is no time for halting policies. Whatever personates torpor or stagnation or reaction 
must be put aside, whether in the shape of legislation, or administering, or partyism, 
or thought. And this is not optional but imperative, under the penalty of other con¬ 
tortion and convulsion hereafter. The active regeneration which must take place in 
the nation, which must mold institutions and reform peoples, must obtain equally in 
the methods of political procedure as in the conduct of official affairs. The intimate 
blending which exists between party organism and governmental control, making the 
one shadow of the other, is such that inasmuch as the vices of the former soon reap¬ 
pear in the latter, so likewise the changes and progressions demanded in admini tration 
will have their first and foremost manifesting in the shapings of political association. 
Thus it is that signs of decay and supersedure in old parties become proof of real ad¬ 
vance and conquest in national development and exaltation. Nowhere and at no time 
has this been more visible than here and now. In no field of human affairs is revolu- 
ion more palpable than in the partyisms of the age, and yet in no sphere is there so 


15 


great an effort to ignore any transformation or recasting—to repel the entrance of truth, 
into politics. Astute leaders of the management—astute at least according to the es¬ 
teem of their class—go burrowing back into old-clieateries for a name, or a disguise, or 
a platform, and think they have achieved a success when they have issued only a 
platitude. Vain delusion, to believe that such idle formulas will deceive any ; that a 
crafty guile which substitutes a nomenclature for a principle will have force in this day 
'of the upturning of old forms ; that the conventionalisms of political thought will super¬ 
sede an individuality of judgment and purpose never before so prevalent among all ranks 
as in this struggle. On the contrary, the shams of the hustings equally with the shams 
of government must be discarded by those who would approach the people. 

Talk not, then, of your Union party, or your Republican party, or your Democratic 
slavery party; the phrases now are meaningless, have become idle parodies on all 
earnest effort. As well go masquerading in the clothes of your ancestry. You have 
a Radical party and a Conservative party, and none other in this nation at this time. 
That is the line of demarkation along which readjustment is actually taking place, and 
it is in presence of the real combat, where conlliet clears up theory, that you will find 
the true positioning of the politics of the country. The former marches under the 
one banner of immediate freedom as essential to assure progress ; the other under many 
flags to preserve sectionalisms, falsify democracy, invite foreign interventions, and be¬ 
tray the hope of the people. The one would grapple to the future and its oreeion- 
promises by every mode ami at all costs; the other wo'’! 1 .iow tne revolution, 

and that at a heavy discount, to buv nr retain office ana power. The one is born of faith, 
the other is t,‘m •*< „r . scion ana representative of compromise. One is the advance, 
the otuer .s me reaction. And here, as in all things else that are to meet solution, ab¬ 
solute truth must prevail; and the effort to substitute unreal issues for the vital 
problems that touch upon the life wrestle of this nation will ignominiously fail. As 
you have changed in all other relations, in constitutionalisms, in national control, in 
foreign outlook, in domestic policies, so must you change in partyisms and conform to 
that which is at issue, not varnish up the dead past. 

Without doubt, if truth were paramount it would disclose that the inner thought 
which burdens here each mind to-day, which gives its own color to speech and action, 
though carefully concealed from expression, is this : who shall rule this nation for 
the presidential term next to come ? That is the kernel of party, and its importance 
is manifest in that it is the dominent idea prevalent with yourselves. And rightfully 
so, for it is charged with the fate of the future. But you cannot compromise your 
thought here by accepting old solutions for new enigmas. In periods of such turmoil 
and danger, persons and policies are tried by to-day and to-morrow, not by departed 
years. Therefore it is that incumbents have no claim, tliat mediocrity cannot stand for 
merit, and that unionisms in platform and circular mean nothing, since the electoral 
dispute in this behalf is not whether there shall be a Union, but what the character 
of that Union shall be : whether it shall be based on incongruity, social antagonisms, 
compromise with hostile elements, or w r hether it shall be rounded into the symmetry 
of absolute freedom, unified by homogeneous structure, and coercing its public life 
into strictest veracities, rather than the loose mockeries and half truths of heretofore. 
In other words, in the separations of to-day, in the struggle for power, in the divisions 
of opinion, there is only the alternation between a Radical party and a Conservative 
party, because there is only the alternative between progress and reaction. See this 
verified in the facts transpiring before your eyes, which you cannot be ignorant of, but 
perhaps are not solicitous to comment on, To-day your Administration is seeking to 
connect itself with whatever is conservative iu tiie land to secure a re-election.. Its 
most decided proclamations are either called in question by the President or rendered 
nugatory by half-hearted execution. Its announced policies are those of amnesty for 
rebels, war and repulsion for radicals. Its accredited spokesmen are the revilers of 
what freedom has accomplished, the traducers of all the advance men of this age. If 
that is to be the Administration of the future, so vouched for and dominated, in 
what will it differ from a reaction, a compromise, a surrender ? Shall we never learn, 
even in the midst of such experiences ? Bethink you how every progress in our na¬ 
tional attitude for three years past has come up out of disaster to our arms, has been a 
torn, reluctant consent only yielded to our desperate misfortunes, Is it a sufficient 
answer to all that to say “And yet there has been progress at last.” Go count the 
two hundred thousand dead such a method of progress has cost; go visit the mourn¬ 
ing firesides that are fitting other sons for new sacrifice under the call for an additional 
half million of soldiers, and you will learn very surely that, however prompt to sus¬ 
tain the nation in the hour of its peril, loyalty does not indorse that paralysis which 
has brooded over its effort, and will never, never, never consent to renew that control 
which has made lethargic civil policies the sure precursor of mil iaiymiscarriage. 


V 



16 


With such as the attitude and such as the issue, does not a grave responsibility rest- 
then on those called here to reflect the public will ? And how, Senators, will yon meet- 
it ? Will you yield to indecision and shake hands with reaction, or will you promptly 
come up to the requirement of these times, accept the mission of the Revolution, enact- 
freedom, conform to veracity, and organize radicalism into a party and a power to take 
charge of the future? If only this Congress shall be true and earnest in legislation 
now, if you shall be out-spoken and free-spoken in this cause, you will do much toward 
inaugurating, for the contest of principle that impends in the country, true issues, and 
by consequence will have a true heroism embodied in the popular choice. If you are 
false, if you aie hesitant, if you fear to stand avouched soldiers of progress, you and 
I and all others with similar responsibility upon them deserve to have sham leaders 
palmed off upon us, and will only succeed in carrying into the future the sloth, incerti¬ 
tude, enforced compliance, lukewarm performances, and unparalleled sacrifices of the 
melancholy past. 

Nor in the better part, in the true organism of the radical faith of the people into an 
active shape, ready to battle and to govern, to administer either peace or war with 
thoroughness and direction, will those who shall contribute toward it be without sup- 
]>o « in the couutiy. There is» much of earnest thinking everywhere among men, 
and rest assured that this pivotal point of earnest effort for the future is not devoid of 
care or interest. While the chief priests of conservatism are interrogating the various 
State Legislatures and other assembly bodies for favorable responses, like Roman augurs 
examining the flight of birds or the entrails of oxen, on the other hand the loyalty of 
the land i hunting itself together by mutual covenant” with a firmness and a touch 
that wiU y"t have, i " it shall dare to exercise it, power and opportunity to shape results 
and save the Republic. With instinctive foresight it has been gathering in council and 
league, in open union or secret affiliation, roughly shaping association out of informal 
recognitions, and assuming cooperative forms to ascertain iis growth and strength, not 
knowing what necessities might arise, but resolute not to he without a bond. Did loy¬ 
alty take alarm tong since, and thus express its distrust of partyism subjected to official 
control? }v dwells with the peop^, and tlrev have strange knowledge. Indeed, the 
people are as far ahead of the politicians in lese times as courage is ever before cow¬ 
ardice. They are ladical i i every bone and muscle. They are democratic in all their 
blood. They are loyal to their faith. And that faith is progress: that democracy is 
freedom; that radicalism is organization to repudiate the courses that rely only ou lost 
battles re 1 inspiration, and appeal ever to reactionary sympathies for political support 
and amnesty proclamations for military prestige, without daring to invoke the spirit of 
this nation in the name of Liberty to arise and conclude the .conquest. 

Mr. President, in bringing to a close the remarks submitted to the Senate, permit-me 
to say that, coming from a city which was the scene of the first armed collision in this 
war, and that has never faltered from that hour to this in devotion to the cause, al¬ 
though its losses have been distressing and unparalleled, I have felt impelled to speak 
in deprecation of baneful policies, above party ties, and regardless of Administrations 
and Cabinets and President. Furthermore, that dwelling where this disease of slavery 
which has been so fatal to our unity was visible in all its developments, and where the 
diversities of class and condition engendered by its influence were constantly witnessed 
in antogonisms, it has seemed not inappropriate to apply those experiences, and dis¬ 
cus with some amplitude the bases, social and political, on which alene we can hope 
for future peace and prosperity to our country. And lastly, that in taking an initia¬ 
tive, and proposing an act of direct abolition, I do so in the name of the great State 
that has honored me with a seat in this Senate, and which, although a slave State 
under the local law, will be proud and grateful to receive emancipation at the hands of 
the Federal Government. Missouri, which was consecrated to slavery more than forty 
years ago by a national Congress, comes this day and asks a national Congress to right 
that wiong and confer upon her freedom as the only sure guarantee of republican in¬ 
stitutions. 

Senators ! after three years of war, no rebel State has yet been entirely conquered 
from the enemy. After three years of administering no slave State has as yet been 
truly reclaimed to freedom. Do you dare then to trifle longer with the destinies of 
this great nation? 











































































